Chapter XV: A Change (6)

In this small volume we have an abridgment of the world's history, ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Commencing with the creation, it brings its well-digested record of events down even to the present day. We are positive that there has not been, and we are morally certain that there never will be an abridgment of history satisfactory to all. This being premised, we can safely assert that this little book is, of its class, as nearly perfect as is possible. While as a text-book this work has deservedly enjoyed a very large circulation in its previous editions, the present one has several additional and weighty claims to general approval. We are told in the preface "that the portion embracing sacred and ancient history has been, in a measure, rewritten. In modern history, the chapters on Greece and Switzerland, and portions of other chapters, are new, the whole being brought down to the present time. Errors and inaccuracies of whatever kind have been carefully rectified. Superfluities have been retrenched, and facts equally important to be known as those already stated, introduced." After a thorough and careful perusal of the book, we can fully indorse the above, and give the publishers our best wishes for its success, trusting with them that "it will now find its way into a still wider circle of institutions than those in which it has been heretofore known and appreciated."

* * * * *

THE PATRIOT'S HISTORY OF IRELAND. By M. F. Cusack, author of _The
Illustrated History of Ireland_. New York: Catholic Publication
Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1869. Pp. 320.

This _History of Ireland_ has been written in order to comply with a very generally expressed desire that the author of _The Illustrated History of Ireland_ would furnish a compendium of Irish history for the use of schools, and for the benefit of those who have not time to read a larger work.

The good sister has, we need hardly say, well performed her task, and literally left nothing to be desired. The book is very neatly got up, well illustrated, and sells at a low price. As the profits are entirely devoted to purposes of charity in Kenmare, Ireland, we earnestly hope for it an extended circulation.

* * * * *

A TEXT-BOOK OF CHEMISTRY. A Modern and Systematic Explanation
of the Elementary Principles of the Science. Adapted to use in
high-schools and academies. By Leroy C. Cooley, A.M. New York:
Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

This text-book lacks one important chapter, no attempt being made to explain the manner of preparing the necessary articles for successful experiments. The fundamental principles are well presented and clearly explained, while the carefully arranged nomenclature is all that can be desired in an elementary work. The series of illustrations are excellent. The book will be found useful to all teachers who wish to give their pupils a general knowledge of chemistry.

* * * * *

FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS. Popular Edition. 2 vols. 12mo.
Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1869.

Of the literary merit of these sermons there can be no two opinions. It is also undeniable that there is much to admire in the character of the man, and much that is true and valuable in his discourses. There is too much of the poison of rationalism in them to make them profitable or even safe reading for any except well-instructed theologians. Clergymen will find them, however, valuable to themselves as models of style and of the art of sermonizing, especially in regard to the use to be made of the narratives of Scripture history, and the application of religious doctrine to the affairs of human life. The portrait of the author presents him before us as a man of strikingly handsome and prepossessing physiognomy, and accords perfectly with the idea we have formed of his manly character.

NOTE.

THE LIFE OF FATHER FABER.--We have received from Mr. Murphy a
copy of this work, reviewed in our last number, printed on tinted
paper, and very handsomely bound. It is one of the most tastefully
and beautifully executed books which we have ever seen from the
press of any American publisher, and we take occasion with the
greatest pleasure to make this acknowledgment to Mr. Murphy of
the favor he has conferred on us and the Catholic public in
reproducing an edition of Father Bowden's excellent biography
which is worthy of the gifted and beloved subject. The portrait of
Father Faber is very fine, and adds much to the value of the book.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. X., No. 58.--JANUARY, 1870.

THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICITY.[100]

This work of serious and conscientious learning by the Abbé Martin, former curé of Ferney, noted as the residence of Voltaire when exiled from France, has been written mainly for the purpose of making known to Catholics of the old Catholic nations of Europe the real character and tendencies of contemporary Protestantism--a work not uncalled for, since those old Catholic populations, seldom coming into personal contact with Protestants, have not kept themselves well posted in the changes, developments, and transformations that Protestantism has undergone during the last two centuries, and are hardly able to recognize it in its present form, or to meet and combat it with success. The great controversial works of the seventeenth century, excellent as they were in their time, only imperfectly serve the present wants of Catholic polemics; for the dogmatic Protestantism they met and vanquished is, save in its spirit, not the Protestantism that now confronts the church. That primitive phase of Protestantism has passed away, never to reappear, and a new and a very different phase has been developed, which demands a new study and a new and different mode of treatment.

The learned Abbé Martin, favorably situated for his task, during several years, at the gate of Geneva, the Protestant Rome, has embodied in his volume the result of much serious and conscientious labor devoted to this new study, and has so well accomplished his task as to leave nothing to be desired, till Protestantism undergoes another metamorphosis, which it is not unlikely to do; for to assume new forms or shapes according to the exigencies of time and place, is of its very essence. For this reason, the labor of refuting or even explaining it can never be regarded as finished.

It is the characteristic of Protestantism to have no fixed and permanent character, except hatred of Catholicity. It has no principles, doctrines, or forms, which in order to be itself, it must always and everywhere maintain. It may be biblical and dogmatic, sentimental or sceptical, combine with absolutism or with the revolution, assert the divine right of kings and passive obedience with the old Anglican divines, or shout, _à bas les rois_, and _vive le peuple! vive liberté, égalité, et fraternité!_ with the old French Jacobins and contemporary Mazzinians and Garibaldians, as it finds it necessary to carry on its unending warfare against the church, without any change in its nature or loss of identity. It is not a specific error, but error in general, ready to assume any and every particular form that circumstances require or render convenient. It, like all error, stands on a movable and moving foundation; and to strike it we are obliged to strike not where it is, but where it will be when our blow can reach it. The abbé is well aware of this fact, and sees and feels the difficulty it creates. Hence he regards Protestantism as imperishable, and holds that our controversy with it must, under one form or another, continue as long as error or hostility to the church continues, which will be to the end of the world.

To those of us who were brought up Protestants, who have known Protestantism in all its forms by our own experience, the Abbé Martin tells little, perhaps nothing that had not previously in some form passed through our own minds, and not much that had not already been published among us by our own Catholic writers. It is not easy to tell an American Catholic any thing new of Protestantism. There is no country in the world where Protestantism is or can be so well studied as our own; for in no other country has it had so free a field for its development and transformations, or in which to prove what it really is and whither it goes. It has suffered here no restraint from connection with the state, and till quite recently the church has been too feeble with us to exert any appreciable influence on its course. It has had in the religious order every thing its own way, has followed its own internal law, and acted out its nature, without let or hinderance. Here it may, therefore, be seen and studied in its real character and essence.

But if the Abbé Martin has not told us much that we did not already know, or which American writers had not already published, he has given us a true and full account of the present aspects and tendencies of Protestantism throughout Europe, very instructive to those Catholics who have had no personal acquaintance with it, and not unprofitable even to those who, though converts to the church, were familiar with it only as seen in some one or two of the more aristocratic sects, in which large portions of Catholic tradition have been retained. We in fact wonder how a man who, like the abbé, has had no personal experience of Protestantism, who has never had any internal struggle with it, and has been brought up from infancy in the bosom of the church and in the Catholic faith, can by study and observation, by prayer and meditation, make himself so fully master of its real character, and come so thoroughly to understand its spirit, its internal laws and tendencies. No doubt one who has been a Protestant, and knows thoroughly its language, can find in his work proofs that Protestantism was not his mother tongue, and that he knows it only as he has learned it; but learned it he has, and knows it better than it is known by the most erudite and philosophical Protestant ministers themselves, and the Catholic reader may rely with full confidence on his expositions. The work is, in fact, an admirable supplement alike to Bossuet's _Variations_ and to Moehler's _Symbolik_.

It will startle some Catholics, no doubt, to hear the well-informed author assert, as he does, that Protestantism is not dead or dying, that it is imperishable, its principle is immortal, and never was it a more formidable enemy to the church than it is at this present moment; but they will be less startled when they learn what he means by Protestantism.

"Protestantism," he says, "differs essentially from all the
heresies that have previously rent the bosom of the church.
It is not a particular heresy, nor a union of heresies; it is
simply a frame for the reception of errors. Vinet, one of the
most distinguished Protestants of the day, softens, indeed, this
expression, and says that 'Protestantism is less a religion than
the place of a religion.' He would have been strictly exact,
if he had said Protestantism is less a religion than the place
of any negation of religion under a religious garb. It is a
circle capable of indefinite extension, of being enlarged as
occasion requires, so as to include any and every error within
its circumference. A new error rises on the horizon, the circle
extends further and takes it in. Its power of extension is limited
only by its last denial, and is therefore practically illimitable.
What it asserted in the beginning it was able to deny a century
later; what it maintained a century ago it can reject now; and
what it holds to-day it may discard to-morrow. It may deny
indefinitely, and still be Protestantism. It can modify, change,
metamorphose, turn and return itself without losing any thing
of its identity. Grub, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly, it is
transformed, but dies not." (Pp. 1, 2.)

All this is perfectly true. Protestantism undoubtedly differs essentially from all the particular heresies of former times, such as the Arian, Macedonian, Nestorian, Eutychian, Pelagian, etc.; but we think it bears many marks of affinity with ancient Gnosticism, of which it is perhaps the historical continuation and development. Gnosticism was not a particular or special heresy, denying a particular article, dogma, or proposition of faith. The Gnostics held themselves to be the enlightened Christians of their times, men who had attained to perfect science, been initiated into the sacred mysteries concealed from the vulgar, professed to be spiritual men, spiritually illuminated, and looked down with contempt on Catholics as remaining in the outer court, sensuous and ignorant, knowing nothing of the Spirit. This is no bad description of contemporary Protestants. They call themselves the enlightened portion of mankind, claim to be spiritual men, spiritually illumined and instructed in the profoundest mysteries of heaven and earth; while from the height of their science they look down on us Catholics as simply sensuous men, having only a sensuous worship, and hold us to be a degraded, ignorant, superstitious, and besotted race. We are very much disposed, for ourselves, to regard Protestantism as Gnosticism modified to suit the taste, the temper, the mental habits, and the capacity of modern times.

The author makes Protestantism not a special heresy, nor yet a union of heresies, but the receptacle of illimitable denials; yet he throughout distinguishes it from absolute unbelief in Christianity, and maintains that even as so distinguished it is imperishable, and its principle immortal. We confess that we do not see how he can make this distinction without giving to Protestantism a specific character and making it a positive heresy, and not simply a frame for the reception of heresy or heresies. Assuming it to be a positive heresy, and not the general spirit of error adapting itself to any and every form of error, his reasoning is far from satisfying us that it is imperishable. The assertion that "its principle is immortal," can in no case be accepted; for all error must ultimately die, and only truth survive, if our Lord is to overcome all his enemies, and God, who is truth itself, is to be all in all. It is not to be supposed that they who are eternally lost continue to err and to sin for ever. They know and confess the truth at last, and it is their severest hell that they know and confess it when it is too late for it to liberate them. Understanding Protestantism to be the general spirit of error, we can concede it to be imperishable, in the sense that the world is imperishable; for men will hate Christ and deny him as long as the world stands; but in no other sense are we prepared to concede it.

The author defines the essence of Protestantism to be hatred of the church, and yet throughout his book distinguishes it from absolute infidelity or unbelief. We do not see the propriety of this distinction, nor understand how he can consistently exclude from Protestantism any form of error that hatred may assume. He makes Protestantism not a particular, a specific heresy, but the frame in which any negation of religion under a religious garb may be set. We see no ground for this restriction, and it seems to us that it contradicts his own assertion that Protestantism is a circle capable of indefinite extension, and practically illimitable; for if the circle can include only the denials of religion that wear a religious garb, it is not illimitable, or capable of indefinite extension.

The learned abbé, we suspect, has been led into this real or apparent contradiction by neglecting to distinguish sharply between Protestants and Protestantism. Protestants are of all shades, from the Calvinist down to the unitarian or rationalist, from the high-churchman down to the no-churchman. The great majority of them retain some shreds of Christian belief, read the Bible, look to Christ as the redeemer of mankind, and are governed more or less in their opinions, sentiments, and conduct by Christian tradition. It would be a great mistake as well as gross injustice to represent all or even many of them as actually or intentionally unbelievers in Christ, or to hold them to be, in the way of error, any thing more than heretics. But Protestantism is not a form of heresy, is nothing in itself but hatred of Catholicity or hostility to the church of God; and there are no lengths in the way of denial it will not go, if necessary for its gratification. It is potentially absolute infidelity.

This seems to be in reality the abbé's own doctrine, and its truth is evident from the fact that the general tendency of Protestants is not toward Catholicity, but farther and farther from it. Individuals among them, in certain times and places, even in large numbers, manifest decided Catholic tendencies, and ultimately find their way back to the church; but whoever knows Protestants well, knows that the mass of them, if driven by Catholic polemics to choose between the church and the denial of Christianity, indeed, of all religion, will not choose the church. "If I can be saved only by becoming a Catholic, I do not wish to be saved," said a Protestant minister to us one day. "I would rather be damned than be a Catholic." We politely assured him he could have his choice. This minister expressed only the too common sentiment of Protestants. A certain number among them, when convinced that Catholicity and Christianity are identical, will, the grace of God moving and assisting, become Catholics; but every day's experience shows that the larger number of them love Christianity less than they hate Catholicity, and will become infidels sooner than they will become Catholics. In doing so, are they illogical? Do they reject Protestantism, or simply follow out its spirit to its last logical consequences?

The learned abbé restricts Protestantism to such negations as wear a religious garb. But with us, in what is called Free Religion, we have seen infidelity itself wearing the garb and speaking the language of religion. In France there are the positivists, real atheists, who clothe themselves with a religious vestment, adopt a ritual, and observe a regular worship. These, if the author insist on his restriction, must be included within the Protestant circle, and if these are included, it will be difficult to say what class of enemies of Christ and his church are to be excluded. We see no good reason, therefore, for any restriction in the case. Protestantism is made up of negations, without any affirmation or positive truth of its own; and no reason can be assigned why we should not hold it capable of including within its circumference, without loss of identity or essential alteration, any or all errors against the Catholic Church, and if as yet only heretical with the many, why it is not capable in its developments of becoming downright apostasy or complete denial of Christianity.

Taken in this sense, we admit that Protestantism is not dead, nor dying; but will continue to confront the church to the end of time. The church in this world is always the church militant. She will always have her enemies with whom she can never make peace so long as she remains faithful to her Lord. "Think not," said our Lord, "that I am come to send peace on the earth; nay, a sword, rather." The synagogue of Satan stands always over against the church of God, and the world will always hate the church as it hated our Lord himself; for she is not of the world as he was not of it. Yet we attach no great importance, if this be its meaning, to the proposition, "Protestantism is imperishable," which the Abbé Martin labors hard and at great length to sustain; for it is only saying in other words that hatred to the church will continue till the consummation of the world.

But if the proposition means that Protestantism under its original or even its present form, as held by the mass of Protestants, is imperishable, we can only say, nothing proves it to our satisfaction. That the essence of Protestantism, which the author defines to be hatred of Catholicity, will continue as long as the world stands we do not doubt; but nothing proves to us that it may not change its form in the future as it has done in the past, or that the great body of Protestants may not gradually eliminate all that they have thus far retained of Christian tradition or Christian belief, reject even the Christian name, and lapse into pure Gentilism, as they are already lapsing into carnal Judaism.

The abbé, while he is strictly correct when telling us what Protestantism is, that it is less a religion than the frame for the reception of all possible anti-Christian negations, yet seems in much of his reasoning with regard to its future to proceed as if he held Protestantism to be, not an immutable system indeed, but, after all, something definite and positive or affirmative. He knows as well as we do, and abundantly proves in his book, that Protestantism affirms nothing, contains as peculiar to itself no affirmative proposition whatever. The affirmative propositions held by Protestants are simply fragments of Catholic truth taught and held fast in their integrity by the church long ages before Luther and Calvin were born, and constitute no part of Protestantism. The Protestantism is all in the perversion, corruption, or denial of Catholic truth. There is nothing in it of its own but its negations and hatred of the church, her faith, her discipline, and her worship, to be continued, or that can be the subject of any predicate. Protestantism receives into its bosom one form of error as readily as another, and complete unbelief as the inchoate apostasy called heresy, though we readily grant that the majority of Protestants are not, as yet, prepared to accept infidelity pure and simple; and many of them, we trust, are, in their intentions and dispositions, prepared to accept and obey the truth when made known to them, and may yet in God's gracious providence find their way into the Catholic communion and be saved.

The Reformers, or the fathers of the modern Protestant movement, did not intend to give up Christianity or the church. They thought they could reject the papacy and the sacerdotal order, and still retain the Christian faith and the Christian church. But they were not slow to discover that this was impracticable, and that, if they gave up the papacy and the sacerdotal order, they must give up the sacraments, save as unmeaning rites, infused grace, the merit of good works, the church as a living organism, the whole Mediatorial work of Christ in our actual regeneration, and fall back on immediatism, and deny all living or present Mediator between God and man. Their successors have found out that an irresistible logic carries them farther still, and requires them to reject all creeds and dogmas as superfluous, to resolve faith into confidence, and to rely solely on the immediate internal illumination and operations of the Holy Ghost. A new generation is beginning to discover that even this is too much, and is preparing to attribute to nature and the soul what its predecessors had attributed to the immediate supernatural operations of the Spirit. There is but one step farther, and you have reached the goal, that of resolving God himself into the human soul, or the identification of God with man and man with God, and not a few have already taken it.

Protestant experience has proved that the Catholic system is homogeneous, self-consistent, all of a piece, so to speak; woven without seam, and not to be parted; that it must either be accepted or rejected as a whole. We do not say that all or the majority of Protestants see this; but many of them see it, and their vanguard loudly proclaim it, and declare the issue to be, Catholicity or rationalism, that is, naturalism. There is no middle ground tenable, to a logical mind with a courage equal to its logic, between the two. It must be either the church or the world, Catholicity or naturalism, God or atheism. We know great bodies move slow, and the great body of Protestants will not come to a full conviction of this to-day nor to-morrow; but they are tending to it, and can hardly fail, in the natural course of things, one day to reach it. Having reached it, we think the sincere and earnest Protestants, who love and study the Bible and mean to be Christians, will be gathered into the Catholic fold, and the others most likely, other things remaining as they are, will follow their Protestant spirit into naturalism, and give up Christian baptism and Christian faith altogether.

The author tells us that there are two very obvious tendencies among Protestants: the one a tendency to return to the church, and the other a tendency to rationalism and complete infidelity; but he thinks there will always remain in the non-Catholic body a certain number of honest, pious souls who shrink from unbelief, and yet, while they hold on to certain shreds of Christianity, will, from ignorance, prejudice, and other causes, continue to protest against the Catholic faith. He supposes that among Protestants there are large numbers of such persons, who really believe in Jesus Christ, who really love his religion as far as they know it, who have real Christian piety, and actually believe themselves to be true Christians in faith and practice. These, he contends, preserve to Protestantism a certain religious and Christian character, and will prevent it from ever lapsing into complete unbelief and irreligion. They will always insist on some form of Christianity; and whatever the form they adopt, it will be Protestantism. He may be right; but we think, in discussing the future of Protestantism, he makes too much account of these pious persons; for if as well disposed as he assumes them to be, they can hardly fail, as time goes on and the real character of the Reformation becomes more and more manifest, to follow out their Christian tendency, and return to the communion of the Catholic Church.

Looking at the two tendencies among Protestants, studying them as thoroughly as we are able, and considering especially the essential nature of Protestantism, together with what we may call the logic of error--for error as well as truth has its logic--we think Protestantism as pretending to be Christian will, as we have said, finally disappear, and prove itself practically, as it is logically, the total rejection of the Christian religion, and therefore of Christ himself. In point of fact, Protestantism in its spirit and essence, as the author shows beyond contradiction, is only the revival under a modern form of the great Gentile Apostasy that followed the building of the Tower of Babel, and must, if it run its course, lapse either into no-religion, as it has already done with our modern scientists, or into demon-worship and gross idolatry and superstition, as it is actually doing with modern spiritists right under our eyes. We look, as we have already intimated, for a separation of the wheat from the chaff, and believe the time will come when the real issue will be made up, and the battle we must wage be not with heresy, but with undisguised and unmitigated infidelity, rationalism, naturalism, or pure secularism.

We cannot give a complete analysis of the Abbé Martin's work; for it is itself little else than an analysis. But an interesting and important portion of it is devoted to the Protestant revival and propaganda, beginning in the latter half of the last century, and continued so vigorously in the present. Protestantism, seeking from the first the aid and protection of the princes, soon assumed in each country that adopted it the form and state of a national religious establishment, defended and governed by the secular power. Having no true spiritual life within, and defended without and provided for by the government, it fell, as soon as the religious wars occasioned by its origin had subsided, into a state of torpor, and the people under it fell almost universally into a religious somnolence. The establishment was sustained even with rigor, but personal religion was generally unknown or disregarded. Some individuals, seeing this, applied themselves to awaken in the torpid masses a personal interest in religion. From them began a religious revival, or a movement in behalf of personal religion, known in Germany as Pietism, in Great Britain and elsewhere as Methodism, which holds principally from John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Lady Huntington. This revival, which has done much to increase individualism, and to weaken the influence of dogma and church principles, and which has developed a species of evangelical illuminism resulting in a sort of infidel illuminism, as seen in our American transcendentalists and free religionists, has, upon the whole, the author thinks, injured more than it has advanced Protestantism. Such, we are sure, has been the fact in this country, unless we identify Protestantism with pure unbelief and indifference. Not one fourth of those assumed to be "hopefully converted" in revival seasons stay converted, while the backsliders are worse Christians, and those who remain pious are no better Protestants, than they were before their conversion.

The revival has, however, given birth to a vigorous propaganda in pagan and Catholic countries, and even in Protestant countries themselves, by means of Bible societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies, supported on a large scale and with apparently inexhaustible means. The author discusses this Protestant propaganda in relation to infidel nations; to mixed nations, or nations composed of Protestants and Catholics; and finally to old Catholic nations. In infidel or pagan nations he maintains that it has thus far been null. He maintains also that in all those Protestant nations, or nations in which Protestantism became the established church, but in which some remnants of the old Catholic population still remained and adhered to the Catholic faith and worship, the propaganda has, upon the whole, proved a failure, and in nearly all of them Catholicity has gained, and is still gaining, on Protestantism. This, counting from the date of the institution of the Protestant foreign and home missions in the beginning of the present century, is certainly true in Great Britain and Ireland, in Holland, Switzerland, especially in Sweden and Norway, and in this country; though the principal gains in England, Scotland, and the United States are due to the immigration of Catholics from countries under Protestant governments, or governments not friendly to the church. In the United States we are almost wholly indebted for the astonishing growth of the church to the migration hither of Catholics from Ireland and Germany. We have numerous conversions, indeed; but they form hardly an appreciable element in our entire Catholic population. In the English-speaking world there have been many conversions from the upper classes and from the ranks of the Protestant ministry, especially of the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal communions; but very little impression is as yet made on the middle and lower classes, who must be converted before much progress is made in the conversion of a nation. We have certainly gained ground in Protestant nations, but probably not much more than we have lost in old Catholic nations.

While the Protestant propaganda has failed with infidel or pagan nations, and with the Catholic populations of Protestant nations, the author maintains that, allied with rationalism and the revolution, it has not been wholly unsuccessful in old Catholic nations, as France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Hungary. It is, he maintains, "worse than idle" to pretend that Protestant missions in these nations are wholly barren of results, or have met with only insignificant success. Their success has been considerable, not perhaps in making Protestants, but in unmaking Catholics. Their missions are generally favored by the press, by the higher literature, and by the governments, which, even though nominally Catholic, are always jealous of the church, and ever encroaching on her rights and restraining her freedom.

The success of the Protestant propaganda in these old Catholic nations, the author thinks, is due to the reputation Protestant nations have of surpassing Catholic nations in material well-being; of having founded civil and religious liberty; and chiefly to the unpopularity of the clergy, the supineness of Catholics, and the ignorance of the Catholic clergy of the real character of contemporary Protestantism. All these causes no doubt are operative; but the real cause, we apprehend, is to be sought in the ascendency acquired by the world in the fifteenth century, and which has invaded Catholic nations hardly less successfully than Protestant nations. Protestantism is the child of this ascendency, and its legitimate tendency is to place the world above heaven, and man above God; or the complete supremacy of the secular over the spiritual.

In its origin Protestantism seemed to be an exaggerated supernaturalism, denying to the natural all moral ability since the fall, and consequently assigning to the human will no active part in the work of justification or sanctification. But extremes meet; and the exaggerated supernaturalism in relation to the world to come proved to be only an exaggerated naturalism in relation to this world. To deny all activity of the natural in the work of sanctity is only emancipating the natural from the supernatural, from the moral law, and leaving it therefore free from all moral accountability, to follow without restraint its own inclinations and tendencies; for what is incapable of meriting is necessarily incapable of sinning. As the affections of the natural fasten on this world and the goods of this life, Protestantism soon lost practically all sense of the divine, as it is now rapidly losing it theoretically, and turned the whole activity of the nations that embraced it to the cultivation of the material order and the acquisition of material goods, leaving the spiritual order behind as a popish superstition, or an invention of priestcraft for enslaving the soul and restraining the natural freedom of mankind.

The spirit that generated and operates in Protestantism, and which its doctrine of free or sovereign grace only fortifies, is, in fact, only the old heathen spirit that seeks only the goods of this life, and so pointedly condemned by Christianity. It reverses the word of our Lord, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you;" and says, "Seek first these things--the goods of this life--and the kingdom of God and his justice shall be added; if, indeed, such kingdom or justice there be." This spirit was not originated by the Reformation. It had preceded it. It had originated the great Gentile Apostasy, and caused the carnal Jews to misinterpret the prophecies and to expect in the promised Messiah a temporal prince instead of a spiritual redeemer and regenerator. It had even entered the garden and induced the fall of our first parents. It has always subsisted in the world; nay, is what St. Augustine called the City of the World as opposed to the City of God, and which had its type and representative in the Roman republic and empire. It is the purely secular spirit emancipated from the spiritual, and substituting itself for it.

This spirit is everywhere warred against by Christianity, therefore by Catholicity; and during the temporal calamities of the barbarous and middle ages was held in check by the church; but the advancement of political and social order, the progress of well-being, the revival of pagan literature and art, the opening of new or long disused routes of commerce, and the discovery, in the fifteenth century, of a new continent with its untold treasures, gave new force and activity to the pagan spirit, and enabled it to pervade and take possession of the governments, never very submissive to the church, of the emperor, of kings, princes, and nobles, and, in general, of the upper classes of European society. Christendom was well prepared at the opening of the sixteenth century for a revival of Gentilism, which found able and magnificent supporters in the Medici of Florence, so dear to modern uncatholic scholars, but so fatal in their influence on Catholic interests.

With the revival of Gentilism or secularism there came the revival of the quarrel of pagan times between Germany and Rome; and Luther's movement derived its chief strength from its appeal to the old German hatred of Roman domination, represented in the fifteenth century, it was assumed, in part by the pope, and in part by the emperor, who pretended to revive the old Roman empire and to succeed to the Roman Cæsars of the West. The Germanic nations, never thoroughly Romanized, rebelled against the church, not because the secular spirit was more or less rampant with them than with the Romanic nations that remained Catholic, but because the centre of her authority was the old hated city of Rome; and they looked upon her authority as Roman, and incompatible with their own national independence. Nothing is farther from the truth than to suppose that they were moved by a desire to emancipate the human mind from its pretended thraldom under the pope, or to establish free inquiry and the liberty of private judgment; for they yielded from the first to the secular or national sovereign all the authority in spirituals which had been previously exercised by the Roman pontiff. Wherever Protestantism gained a political status, the two powers, as under paganism--unless we except Geneva, Scotland, and, subsequently, New England--were united in the secular sovereign or the state. Calvin in Geneva, Knox in Scotland, and the Puritans in New England, though they sought to unite the two powers in the same governing body, sought to unite them in the hands of the church rather than of the state, in consequence of their misinterpretation of the Hebrew commonwealth, which, in fact, gave us the first example in history of the separation of the two powers, the sacerdotal and the secular, always asserted and insisted on by the Catholic Church.

The real character of the Protestant movement was a movement in behalf of nationalism--the distinctive feature of Gentilism--revived by the insurgent worldly spirit. The church herself, in the nations that adhered to her, was defended against the so-called Reformation, except by the theologians, not on Catholic principles, but on national principles; and hence the secular authority sought constantly to exercise a supervision over the church, and, as far as possible, to convert her into a national church. The so-called Catholic governments did not differ in principle from the Protestant governments, and have never done so since. They protected the church, to a certain extent, from recognized heresies, and provided for the pomp and splendor of her worship; but restrained in every possible way her full freedom of action, and compelled her to yield to their respective national policies in order to avoid a greater evil. The church could not fully instruct the people in any Catholic nation in the principles which should govern the relations of church and state without incurring the persecution of her pretended protectors. Hence, there grew up in all Catholic nations a false view of those relations, which greatly weakened the church and aided the growth of the secular spirit. Catholicity, having been supported, not as Catholic but as a national religion, by Catholic governments and their courtiers, we find now, when the governments cease to defend it even as a national religion, and are more hostile than friendly to the church, that the Catholic populations of old Catholic nations, never allowed by the secular authority to be fully instructed in the secular relations of their religion, and never accustomed to act personally in the intellectual defence of their faith, incrusted over with the secularism encouraged by their governments, are almost universally unarmed and defenceless before the Protestant propaganda, having in its favor the prestige of the worldly power and supposed well-being of Protestant nations, and of the championship of civil and religious liberty.

Here, we apprehend, is the real secret of the success of Protestant missions in old Catholic nations; not in the ignorance of the Catholic clergy of the real character of contemporary Protestantism, as the Abbé Martin maintains. He shows, perhaps exaggerates, the danger which the church runs in these old Catholic nations, and admits that it is becoming apparent, if not to all, at least to many of the clergy, and asks,

"How could it be otherwise with the French clergy, so learned, so
pious, so vigilant, and so zealous? They are preparing themselves
for the struggle; they proceed to the battle with the energy
of faith; they lack not ability; but they _lack a knowledge of
contemporary Protestantism_. If they would struggle with success,
if they would revive the glorious days of the Catholic apologetic
of the seventeenth century, or rather, if they would create a new
apologetic in harmony with the wants and errors of the times,
they must study Protestantism in its latest evolutions and in its
actual physiognomy." (Pp. 178, 179.)

No doubt there is more or less ignorance even among the French clergy as to the various phases and wiles of Protestantism, and which their text-books will hardly help them to dissipate; but what seems to us to stand most in their way is precisely their need of studying Catholic theology more thoroughly in its relations to human reason and the secular order--a study they could hardly prosecute under what are facetiously termed "the Gallican liberties;" that is, liberties of the government to enslave the church. No man who has learned Catholic theology as catholic instead of national, who has learned that the church represents on earth the spiritual order, and has the freedom and courage to maintain that the spiritual is superior to the temporal, is, in fact, the end for which the temporal exists, and therefore that which prescribes to the temporal its law, can ever be at a loss to understand or to know how to meet Protestantism the moment he sees it, whatever the particular phase it may exhibit. Protestantism is not and never was any thing but a series of negations, and all the advantage it has ever had or ever will have over Catholics is precisely in their ignorance of the real or intrinsic relation of the Catholic doctrine or doctrines it denies to the whole body of Catholic truth.

Protestantism, the author himself sees, is simply revived paganism; but what he does not see is, that the state in all European nations has always been pagan, and never in its principle or constitution been truly Christian. Our own political constitution may be very imperfect, may be destined to a speedy end; but it is the first and only instance in history of a political constitution based on Christian principles; that is, on the recognition of the independence of religion and the supremacy of the spiritual order. It recognizes, in our modern phrase, the inalienable rights of man as its basis; but what the American statesman calls the rights of man are, in reality, the rights of God, which every human authority must hold sacred and inviolable. We pretend not that the American people or American statesmen fully understand or adhere practically to the American constitution, or that they ever will till they become Catholics and understand, as comparatively few Catholics even now do, the principles of their church in their political and social applications. Nevertheless, the constitution is based on the independence and supremacy of the spiritual order, which the secular order must always and everywhere recognize, respect, and defend. This is in direct contradiction of the principle of the pagan republic, which asserts the independence and supremacy of the state alike in temporals and spirituals.

But this pagan principle of the supremacy of the state has always been the basis of the European public law, and the church, though she has always maintained the contrary, has always been held in the civil jurisprudence to have only the rights accorded her by the civil government. This has always been the doctrine alike of the Civil Law and the Common Law courts, always rigidly enforced by the French parliaments, and not seldom yielded by courtly prelates afraid, as in England, of the statute of _præmunire_. There have been individual sovereigns who personally understood and yielded the church her rights; but their lawyers never recognized them save as grants or concessions by the prince. Hence the interminable quarrel of the legists and the canonists, and the sad spectacle of the bishops of a nation not seldom deserting almost in a body the supreme pontiff in his deadly struggle with their civil tyrants in defence of their own rights, and the freedom and independence of the spiritual order. Hence, too, we see Italian statesmen, while pretending to acknowledge and confirm religious liberty, confiscating the goods of the church, and prescribing in the name of the state the conditions on which the bishops of the church will be permitted to exercise their pastoral functions. Hence it is, also, that we have seen pious and devout Catholics defend the revolution and preach political atheism in one breath, and the most rigid orthodoxy in another.

With all deference to M. l'Abbé Martin, we must think that what is wanting in the Catholic populations of old Catholic countries in order to resist the Protestant propaganda, is not so much a better knowledge of Protestantism, as a more thorough knowledge of their own faith, and of Catholic principles themselves, in relation to one another and to the secular order--a knowledge which has been hindered, and to a great extent prevented, by the paganism of the state, which has disabled the church from freely and fully giving it. Happily, the European governments by ceasing to be protectors of the church have in great measure lost the power, if not to afflict and persecute, at least to enslave her. The bishops, with only here and there an exception, no longer take the side of Cæsar against Peter, and see that their interests and those of the church can be saved only by the strictest union with and submission to the supreme pastor, the vicar of Christ. The supreme pastor himself, without consulting earthly potentates or conferring with flesh and blood, has pronounced in his Encyclical and Syllabus, a rigorous judgment on political atheism and paganism in modern society, and set forth the Catholic principles in which the faithful need to be instructed in order to resist the Protestant propaganda, supported by rationalism and the revolution. He has asserted the independence and freedom of the church in convoking by his own authority, almost in defiance of the secular powers, an oecumenical council, to be held in his own palace of the Vatican, in which the universal church, aided by the Holy Ghost, will, we presume, deliberate and pronounce upon the errors of the times, and indicate the means of arresting the evils that now so grievously afflict society, both spiritual and secular. Hereafter, we may hope, the faithful, cost what it may, will be more thoroughly instructed as to the relations of the two powers, and of faith to reason and civil society, so that an end will be put to the progress in Catholic nations of Protestantism, rationalism, and political atheism.

The Abbé Martin succeeds better in describing Protestantism as it is, and in setting forth the danger it threatens, than in pointing out the remedy to be applied by Catholics, or in assigning the causes of the defects he finds or thinks he finds among them. He does not see that these defects, in so far as general, are almost wholly due to the pagan constitution of the state, which has survived the downfall of pagan Rome, and to the fact that the church has never yet in the Old World had her full freedom and independence, but has always been more or less restrained in her action by the jealousy or hostility of the state. The lack of individual energy and self-reliance of Catholics in asserting and defending the rights of the church, which the abbé deplores, has its origin in the restraint imposed by the civil authority on the freedom of the church.

"Catholics," he says, "relying on authority, full of confidence in
its unfailing promises, are quite ready to think that it is enough
for them to preserve the faith in their hearts, and to perform
its works, while the defence and preservation of the church
is the care of Providence. This sentiment, very commendable,
no doubt, is yet, when not joined to a masculine energy which
counts no sacrifices, if needed, in sustaining the work of God,
only an enervating sloth. Catholics--may I say it?--need the
activity of individual forces, not, indeed, of that excessive
individualism which, puffed up by pride, drives the Protestant
over the dark waves of doubt, but that Christian individualism
which, accepting by conviction the compass of authority, knows
how to employ all its personal forces in its service. This
individualism, Protestants reproach us with lacking; let us prove
to them the contrary, and show that individual action is quite
as powerful and far more productive, when it is well balanced,
measured, and subjected to wise rules, as when it wanders without
law or discipline, and acts only under the varying impulses of
free inquiry. It is, moreover, necessary to enter into this way;
for the time has come for Catholics to understand that they can
henceforth nowhere on earth count on any support but from God and
themselves." (Pp. 175, 176.)

The author adds that Catholics, not only nominal but even many practical Catholics, lack the individual energy that

"springs from profound faith, the faith which goes to the marrow,
and enters even the centre of the soul, and radiates from it
in earnest convictions over all religious practices, over the
entire life, giving to them their true sense and to it the right
direction and end. Protestants accuse our church of materialism in
her worship....

"The charge is false when applied to the church and her worship,
but is only too true when applied to her members. Hence the
painful inconsistencies in their conduct. They are Catholics in
the church, Catholics in essential religious practices, sometimes
even in works of supererogation, but are elsewhere and in other
matters hardly Christians. The _petit devotion_ is sterile; manly,
robust piety alone is productive, and it is it alone that we must
labor to diffuse. We should seek to make it enter into souls and
become fused with their very substance. Catholic worship is the
most admirable vehicle of the spirit of life; but souls must
comprehend it, and be instructed to draw the spirit of life from
it." (Pp. 176, 177.)

There is no doubt truth in this, and with but too many Catholics their religion is little more in practice than a lifeless form; but this, so far as due to the clergy, is due rather to their want of earnestness and zeal, which the author says they do not lack, than to their ignorance of contemporary Protestantism. We pay little heed to the reproaches of Protestants, more likely to mislead than to instruct Catholics; but we are quite willing to concede that in old Catholic nations there may be a want among Catholics of the sort of individual energy defined and demanded by the author; but, in the first place, we are disposed to think that his long study of Protestantism, which is based on individualism, and his observation of the part played by what Protestants call personal religion, have led him to overrate the importance of this outward individual zeal and energy in the church; and in the second place, he seems not to have sufficiently considered that they can hardly be looked for in a community accustomed for ages to rely on the civil power to look out for the defence of the church, and for her protection against heretics and heresies. In such communities the free action of the church has been crippled by the attempt of the state to do her work and only bungling it, and in which no call for personal effort in preserving and defending the church externally has been made on Catholics as individuals. The evil results naturally from the condition in which Catholics must be found when abandoned by the government that had hitherto saved them from all necessity of any personal activity in their own defence against external enemies. It can be only temporary, if the church is left henceforth free by the government to appeal to the individual faith, love, and exertions of the faithful under her direction.